[on the positive side {and consider the tea party posts positive}]
Remembering 9/11: We Are Americans
It has been eight years since the United States suffered the worst attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. As we look back, we should take stock of what has transpired since then. We have sent our nation's soldiers into battlefields far from home to defend us. These brave men and women live in treacherous conditions, facing improvised roadside bombs, suicide bombers and other attacks. Yet they fight on in their mission to defend the United States and all of us without complaint.
Our all-volunteer service is made up of Americans of all races, creeds, and economic backgrounds. These soldiers are on the front lines of this battle, and there are others in the fight as well. We must continue to give our utmost support to the United States military and those that support their efforts. In light of this, I have added my name to a letter sent to President Obama urging him to remain committed to prosecuting the War on Terror in Afghanistan. Never have so few defended the liberty of so many. We must continue to support their mission because they will continue to fight for us.
President Reagan ended his first inaugural with this story:Under one such marker lies a young man-Martin Treptow-who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire. We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone." The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. And, after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans. God bless you, and thank you.
As we look back to that tragic day eight years ago we take pride in the fact that we came together as a nation in the days, months and years that followed. We rose to the challenge that fateful day and we still can. And why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans.
I thank all our servicemen and women, in and out of uniform, for keeping us safe over the last eight years in the face of enormous odds.
Please thank a veteran today. They certainly do not look for those thanks, but they have more than earned it.
[HT:AP?!!]
But within hours, the Associated Press had “fact-checked” the President’s speech and found the Fact-Checker-in-Chief is guilty of misrepresenting a few facts himself. AP writers Calvin Woodward and Erica Werner said the President uttered “a variety of oversimplifications and omissions,” and used “only-in Washington accounting” to claim his plan would not add “one dime” to the deficit.
Excerpts:
OBAMA: "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."He also promised to overhaul the nation's health care system without adding "one dime" to the deficit.
THE FACTS: That's correct, as far as it goes. But neither can the plan guarantee that people can keep their current coverage. Employers sponsor coverage for most families, and they'd be free to drop insurance in favor of the cheaper government fee for doing so, leaving only the government plan for their employees.
The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.
In the past Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period." Now he's stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan "requires" any change.
...
OBAMA: "Don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. ... That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare."
THE FACTS: Obama and congressional Democrats want to pay for their health care plans in part by reducing Medicare payments to providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years....Although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage.
...
OBAMA: Requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies "makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives."
THE FACTS: Studies have shown that much preventive care — particularly tests like the ones Obama mentions — actually costs money instead of saving it....
.
.
READ MORE
"Barack Obama will not stop committing serial dishonesty with the American people until the media expose his false figures and bogus exaggerations for what they are: fraudulent scare tactics.
"Last night Obama told a litany of lies. He said the total cost of his health reform would be $900 billion over ten years, but even the government-run Congressional Budget Office found it would cost $1.6 trillion. He claimed his reform would not cover illegal immigrants or abortions, but nothing in any of the Democrat bills requires citizen verification and several organizations including the National Right to Life Committee have shown exactly how federal funds would be used to pay for abortion-on-demand. He knows these are lies and he tells them because he is confident the left wing 'news' media will let him get away with it.
"Worst still, Obama used these lies to play on Americans greatest fears and vulnerabilities. He warned that more people would die unless we passed his sweeping plan and threatened that our country's economic pulse would weaken with American businesses closing. And still, the media let him get away with it.
"This must stop. The media must expose Obama's calculated scare tactics and lying on 'reform.' Failing to do so gives him a green light to lie and cry wolf about whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And it will aid in the most radical government takeover ever attempted in America."
.
CNN’s senior political correspondent Candy Crowley detailed the poll’s results on Anderson Cooper 360 less than an hour after the President delivered his speech on Wednesday evening, and the following morning on the American Morning program.
Update: MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell released the following statement regarding the CNN poll:
"CNN has no business airing a ‘poll’ that is straight partisan reaction from those already in the can for ObamaCare. Caveat or no caveat, CNN was dead wrong to run this and on national television proclaim,
‘We have important numbers here.’
It is an embarrassment that their news directors deemed it newsworthy to begin with. This network simply cannot be trusted to cover this hugely important story fairly."
[HT:PF]
The following was posted at Facebook late Wednesday evening:
After all the rhetoric is put aside, one principle ran through President Obama’s speech tonight: that increased government involvement in health care can solve its problems.
Many Americans fundamentally disagree with this idea.
We know from long experience that the creation of a massive new bureaucracy will not provide us with “more stability and security,” but just the opposite. It's hard to believe the President when he says that this time he and his team of bureaucrats have finally figured out how to do things right if only we’ll take them at their word.
Our objections to the Democrats’ health care proposals are not mere “bickering” or “games.” They are not an attempt to “score short term political points.” And it’s hard to listen to the President lecture us not to use “scare tactics” when in the next breath he says that “more will die” if his proposals do not pass.
In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns “bogus,” “irresponsible,” and “a lie” -- so much for civility. After all the name-calling, though, what he did not do is respond to the arguments we’ve made, arguments even some of his own supporters have agreed have merit.
In fact, after promising to “make sure that no government bureaucrat .... gets between you and the health care you need,” the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council -- an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost ... the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives....” He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too.
It was heartening to hear the President finally recognize that tort reform is an important part of any solution. But this concession shouldn’t lead us to take our eye off the ball: the Democrats’ proposals will not reduce costs, and they will not deliver better health care. It’s this kind of “healthy skepticism of government” that truly reflects a “concern and regard for the plight of others.” We can’t wait to hear the details on that; we look forward to working with you on tort reform.
Finally, President Obama delivered an offhand applause line tonight about the cost of the War on Terror. As we approach the anniversary of the September 11th attacks and honor those who died that day and those who have died since in the War on Terror, in order to secure our freedoms, we need to remember their sacrifices and not demonize them as having had too high a price tag.
Remember, Mr. President, elected officials work for the people. Forcing a conclusion in order to claim a “victory” is not healthy for our country. We hear you say government isn’t always the answer; now hear us -- that’s what we’ve been saying all along.- Sarah Palin
.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Taliban militants on Tuesday shot dead four schoolchildren and wounded six others in an apparent sectarian attack in a remote tribal town in northwest Pakistan, officials and residents said.
The students were going to school in Atmankhel town of Orakzai district when the militants opened fire, killing four boys and wounding six others...
READ MORE
.
Ill will against former Vice President Dick Cheney still runs high in some circles.
So high, in fact, that when the University of Wyoming decided to name an international student center after him, Suzanne Pelican began circulating a petition against it last year. One year later, that petition has earned 150 signatures and an Associated Press story.
One hundred fifty signatures in a year? That must be some kind of organizing.
Hat tip to Gay Patriot who comments:
Wow, we got thrice that in an afternoon at a Tea Party in Santa Monica, one of the most left-wing bastions in the Golden State. And we didn’t have a an AP report from that grassroots protest leading Yahoo!’s news.
.
I discovered Jean Francois Revel quite by accident. While researching anti-American organizations that support terrorist groups, I came across a thin volume entitled simply, Anti-Americanism. Written by a respected French intellectual, it is the rarest of works, examining and condemning the reflexive and unjustified anti-Americanism found in the European and particularly the French press. It is a clear and biting indictment of the unreason of the popular press and of the totalitarian left.
"But democracy can defend itself only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy. His aim of destroying democracy itself, of actively seeking an absolute monopoly of power, is shrewdly hidden behind the citizen's right to oppose and criticize the system.
"Paradoxically, democracy offers those seeking to abolish it a unique opportunity to work against it legally. They can even receive almost open support from the external enemy without its being seen as a truly serious violation of the social contract.
"The frontier is vague, the transition easy between the status of a loyal opponent wielding a privilege built into democratic institutions and that of an adversary subverting those institutions. To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying it principles.
"Exaggerated self-criticism would be a harmless luxury of civilization if there were no enemy at the gate condemning democracy's very existence. But it becomes dangerous when it portrays its mortal enemy as always being in the right. Extravagant criticism is a good propaganda device in internal politics.
"But if it is repeated often enough, it is finally believed. And where will the citizens of democratic societies find reasons to resist the enemy outside if they are persuaded from childhood that their civilization is merely an accumulation of failures and a monstrous imposture?"- Jean Francois Revel, How Democracies Perish
Still on the wrong side of history
The Obama administration's war against Honduran democracy continues. On Thursday , the United States of America cut off aid to Honduras for following their own laws.
Now, our State Department has expanded visas to Cuba while denying them to Honduras.
The blog Mere Rhetoric explains:The new Honduras guidelines mean you can only acquire a visa on an emergency basis, compared to the new Cuba rules which allow unlimited family travel. A few days ago the administration announced that they were looking to restrict visas to Honduras even further. Because the Cuban government is so much more democratic and legitimate than the entirety of the duly-elected and constitutionally-prescribed Honduran state.
[For shame.]
READ MORE
On a related note, Fausta Wertz has a roundup and pictures from the "Anti-Chavez Day" of demonstrations across Latin America...
,
One of the bigger disappointments, but sadly not one of the bigger surprises, is that the teenage unemployment rate reached an all-time seasonally adjusted high of 25.5%.
People who know even a little bit about economics should understand why, but an oddly titled (Oh What a Time to Be Young!) New York Times blog by Catherine Rampall took a pass on realistically trying to explain it.
Luckily, the Internet format allows readers to make up for the oversights of posters:
Undoubtedly due to minimum wage increases. I don’t know of a single business that kept on as many teenage workers when the minimum wage increased. -- Josh
Higher minimum wages will kill job prospects for the young. In 27 years of business I never paid just the minimum wage, but now I have to in California. It costs way too much to train someone before they become productive; it’s just not worth it and now I am much more likely to cut my losses with a slow learner rather than train them more. -- Jon A
.... This happens every time they increase the minimum wage; teenagers are laid off and their wages are spread around to pay the remaining workers’ higher wages. The first full month of the new minimum wage, 150,000 teens lose their job. It is a sadly predictable result of liberal policy. -- Vitalis
Wow. The kids are applying for unemployment* instead of just going back to school and studying. Free is free. When I was in school, I never considered applying, even though I could have. -- Cathy
One-sided segment uses misleading footage, biased sources and omits key points to perpetrate scheme by Ecuadoran government, friend of Obama.
When $27 billion is at stake, some companies would pay big bucks to win a PR battle, but one side of an environmental lawsuit doesn’t have to, since CBS is pushing its position for free.
On CBS’s May 3 “60 Minutes,” correspondent Scott Pelley, who once compared global-warming skepticism to Holocaust denial, gave the plaintiff of a $27-billion frivolous lawsuit against Chevron a public relations victory with his report.
Pelley’s report featured a suit filed by the Amazon Defense Coalition, a group described as “eco-radicals,” who are trying to squeeze $27 billion from Chevron "on behalf of 30,000 villagers", although there are only 48 named plaintiffs.
Pelley left out everything from huge problems in the Ecuadorian courts to the close ties the lead attorney has with a prominent former U.S. senator – President Barack Obama...
READ MORE
.
If you’ve been of the opinion that the weather in Winnipeg has never been so bad — you’re right. Environment Canada says that Winnipeg will set a local record today for nine consecutive months of below-seasonal temperatures.
"You’ve never had nine consecutive months of below-seasonal temperatures before,"
.
What on earth is the Republican Party thinking? Or rather, what is it foolishly ignoring? The Obama administration has handed Republicans and conservatives a huge club with which to pound their Democrat opponents.
That's right, Bubba, a Democrat administration has put a freeze on Social Security cost of living increases...
[Relax; only Republicans are evil - when Dems put it to the little guy it's for their own good - so no story there...]
READ MORE
.
Socialist. It's the new N-word. So know when you call Barack Obama a "socialist," the rest of us [?] are thinking: "There goes a racist."
How do we know this? Well, the administration and our media tell us so...
READ MORE
.
14% say the ideological balance of Congress is about right and 12% are not sure.
Middle income earners are more likely than others to see Congress as too liberal. Among those who earn between $40,000 and $100,000 a year, 64% hold that view.
President Barack Obama is seen as politically liberal by 77% of voters nationwide.
READ MORE
.
Women held 49.83 percent of the nation's 132 million jobs in June and they're gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the current pace, women will become a majority of workers in October or November. From December 2007 to June 2009:
[Hisory]
For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of the nation's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less.
In Obama's first two years in office, the Environmental Protection Agency expects to begin the final phase of cleanup at fewer Superfund sites than in any administration since 1991, according to budget documents and agency records. The EPA estimates it will finish construction to remove the last traces of pollution at 20 sites in 2009 and 22 sites in 2010.
During the eight years of the Bush administration, the agency finished construction at 38 sites on average a year.
Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and some Democratic lawmakers who highlighted how little the Bush administration did on hazardous waste cleanups are now silent.
READ MORE
"There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory." Mark Twain
"The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth." Aldous Huxley
[HT:JW].
In August, former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Dr. Howard Dean made a telling statement when he answered a question at a Congressional town hall meeting about the lack of medical liability reform in the current health care reform proposals. Dean responded,
"The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people that wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth."
.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that only 21% disagree and 25% are not sure.
With Republicans pushing for so-called tort reform as part of the health care reform bill now before Congress, 56% of all voters agree that the government should limit the amount of money a jury can award a plaintiff in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
As is often the case, the Political Class disagrees with Mainstream America on the issue. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Mainstream Americans think limiting jury awards would significantly reduce health care costs, but a plurality (47%) of the Political Class disagree.
Similarly, 61% of Mainstream Americans say the government should limit the amount a jury can award a plaintiff in a medical malpractice suit, but only 26% of the Political Class agree.
Voters under the age of 30 are the least critical of jury awards and the least supportive of any limits on them.
READ MORE
.
President Obama has made the calculated political decision to sell the Democrats' heavy-handed government revamp as the one and only possible reform to our medical delivery system.
He has also consistently mischaracterized our healthcare system as thoroughly broken, a veritable healthcare crisis.
President Obama told the rest of us to keep quiet while he made deals with every special-interest lobbyist at the backroom table.
What a heap of poisonous poppycock.
Presenting the American people with the utterly false choice of a my-way reform vs. no reform whatsoever has backfired precisely because it was blatantly dishonest in the first place...
READ MORE
.
President Obama continues to portray those who oppose his plan are said to be "obstructionist" or in favor of the status quo. Recently, the President again said, "I've got a question for all those folks [who oppose his plan]: What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution?"
If the President really wanted to know more he might have read Michael Tanner's recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times or Michael Cannon's piece in Investors Business Daily (IBD). He could have read Cato's book, "Healthy Competition." Or he might have just gone to healthcare.cato.org and read their plan:
[Meanwhile, in our professional media...]
Have you ever wondered what planet liberal media members live on?
Before you answer, consider the following astonishing quote from a New York Times article published Tuesday:
"While the month of August clearly knocked the White House back on its heels, as Congressional town hall-style meetings exposed Americans’ unease with an overhaul, the uproar does not seem to have greatly altered public opinion or substantially weakened Democrats’ resolve."
39% of Americans saying they would direct their member of Congress to vote against a healthcare reform bill this fall while 37% want their member to vote in favor.
.
In an op-ed on Sunday ["The Elders' View of the Middle East"], former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on behalf of a self-appointed group of "Elders," described a rapacious Israel facing long-suffering, blameless Palestinians, who are contemplating a "nonviolent civil rights struggle" in which "their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela."
As with most of Carter's recent statements about Israel and the Palestinians, instead of facts we get vignettes from recent Carter travels. And while he finds "a growing sense of concern and despair" among "increasingly desperate" Palestinians, polls do not sustain this view.
The most recent survey by the leading Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki (done in August, the same month Carter visited), shows "considerable improvement in public perception of personal and family security and safety in the West Bank and a noticeable decrease in public perception of the existence of corruption in [Palestinian Authority] institutions."
This does not sound like despair.
In fact, positive views of personal and family safety and security in the West Bank stood at 25 percent four years ago, 35 percent two years ago and 43 percent a year ago, and they have risen to 58 percent in the past year, Shikaki reports.
There are other ways to measure quality of life in the West Bank: The International Monetary Fund recently stated that "macroeconomic conditions in the West Bank have improved" largely because "Israeli restrictions on internal trade and the passage of people have been relaxed significantly."
The IMF predicts that "continuation of the relaxation of restrictions could result in real GDP growth of 7% for 2009 as a whole," a rate of growth that would be far in excess of ours -- or Israel's.
Carter's efforts to portray life among the Palestinians as unbearable and getting worse are belied by data. His efforts to blame Israel for all the problems that do exist are equally demonstrably false, for anyone interested in looking at facts before the speak...
READ MORE
.
With a full medical team of eight doctors and 11 registered nurses — and a budget of $38 million — the occupational health clinic at the United Nations should have all the resources it needs to meet any kind of emergency.
Yet the U.N. Medical Services Division (MSD) offers this important piece of advice for any U.N. employee in New York City who suffers a life-threatening condition at work: Don't call us.
Call 9-1-1.
READ MORE
,
According to the most recent count in Politico, with the resignation of the red green czar Van Jones, the White House still has 30 czars in its stable (12 more than Russia which had but 18 Romanov czars):
Afghanistan Czar: Richard Holbrooke
AIDS Czar: Jeffrey Crowley
Auto recovery Czar: Ed Montgomery
Border Czar: Alan Bersin
California Water Czar: David J. Hayes
Car Czar: Ron Bloom
Central Region Czar: Dennis Ross
Domestic Violence Czar: Lynn Rosenthal
Drug Czar: Gil Kerlikowske
Economic Czar: Paul Volcker
Energy and Environment Czar: Carol Brower
Faith-Based Czar: Joshua DuBois
Great Lakes Czar: Cameron Davis
Guantanamo Closure Czar: Daniel Fried
Health Czar: Nancy-Ann DeParle
Information Czar: Vivek Kundra
International Climate Czar: Todd Stern
Intelligence Czar: Dennis Blair
Mideast Peace Czar: George Mitchell
Pay Czar: Kenneth Feinberg
Regulatory Czar: Cass Sunstein
Science Czar: John Holdren
Stimulus Accountability Czar: Earl Devaney
Sudan Czar: J. Scott Gration
TARP Czar: Herb Allison
Terrorism Czar: John Brennan
Technology Czar: Aneesh Chopra
Urban Affairs Czar: Adolfo Carrion Jr.
Weapons Czar: Ashton Carter
WMD Policy Czar: Gary Samore
.
If the president were so concerned with being labeled a socialist, it probably wouldn't be prudent to appoint individuals with socialist backgrounds to serve in his administration, as in the latest and newest czar, Ron Bloom.
At first glance it seems rather odd that Bloom, a former high-level SEIU official, would be appointed to a position that would require him to create [?] manufacturing jobs, but further review of his background provides more clarity as to why he's ascended to the position of Manufacturing Czar.
JTA reports:
By now Ron Bloom's professional road to becoming the Obama administration's car czar has been widely reported. Missing from the coverage, however, has been any mention of those formative years at Jewish summer camp. Born in New York City and raised in Swarthmore, a suburb of Philadelphia, much of Bloom's early life revolved around Habonim (now known as Habonim Dror), a progressive Labor Zionist youth movement that emphasizes cultural Judaism, socialism and social justice...
The Obama administration and its car-czar group appear to be intent on teaching someone who got in their way a brutal lesson.
Secured creditors' claims stayed in the "Old Chrysler," which was stripped of most of its value.
The ownership structure of "New Chrysler" that emerged turned out to be the following, according to this September 4 Bloomberg report -- U.S. Government -- 9.85%; Fiat Motors -- 20%; Canadian government -- 2.46%; the UAW's health care trust -- 67.69%.
Secured creditors have no stake in "New Chrysler."
“Having stripped Chrysler’s first lien lenders of $5 billion in connection with the sham sale of Chrysler’s assets to a shell corporation, Treasury is now trying to make it difficult for the lenders to recover any of their losses from the scraps that were left behind,”
MONDAY, MAY 11, 2009
Gangster government gives Chrysler to UAW
.
A couple of days ago, I wrote an AT blog post on a New York Times story about the Stimulus bill’s failure to stop a “green” company from going through major lay-offs.
On Monday The New York Times ran a story on how the Stimulus has “failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades.”
Under the implicit assumption that local residents don’t know what’s best for them and their children, Obama and the Congress dedicated $100 billion of the Stimulus to school funding. But that money hasn’t been enough to prevent extensive school lay-offs.
In both public and private sectors, Obama’s big plans have fallen short or completely flat. Even after spending trillions, the president couldn’t make his promises come true. The late Milton Friedman explained why:
There's been one underlying basic fallacy in this whole set of… [economic] measures, and that is the fallacy…that it is feasible and possible to do good with other people's money.
.
Half of voters nationwide (50%) say increases in government spending hurts the overall economy. Just 28% says increased government spending helps the economy.
Forty-six percent (46%) of voters say that cuts in government spending help the economy while just 24% say such spending cuts spending hurt the economy.
[But the real agenda has nothing to do with stimulating and economy.]
READ MORE
[HT:DP].
There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them.
One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.
And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.
A few years ago, journalists - citing the chasm between Miami's high cost of living and its low level of income - began predicting that South Florida and its perpetual population-growth machine would soon face the unthinkable: a falling head count. Now it's official.
The region - Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties - lost 27,400 residents between 2008 and 2009, while Florida as a whole lost 58,000. That's not exactly a mass exodus for a state of 18 million; but it's the first net outflow in 63 years for a state that considers itself the new California:
"It's difficult for the working middle class to justify living here," ... "As much as they may love the sunshine, as you squeeze them out, they may find it in their best interests to move."
.
The White House is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "endangerment finding" that as a matter of law CO2 is a pollutant that threatens the public's health and must therefore be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Such a rulemaking would let the EPA impose the ossified command-and-control regulatory approach of the 1970s, even if Democrats never get around to passing a cap-and-tax bill, says the Wall Street Journal.
Yet a curious twist is buried in the EPA's draft rule. The agency thinks it enjoys the discretion to target the new rules only to major industrial sources of carbon emissions, such as power plants, refineries, factories and the like.
This so-called "tailoring rule" essentially rewrites clear statutory language of the Clean Air Act by bureaucratic decree:
.
With most of Washington concentrating on economic policies and health care, reforming immigration isn't a priority. Marchers at an immigration rights rally Monday in Chicago hope to change that and called on President Obama and Congress to act or face political trouble at election time...
READ MORE
.
Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.
Federal student-loan disbursement -- the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools -- in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25 percent over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The ripple effects for today's heavily indebted young people are becoming palpable, says the Wall Street Journal.
A growing body of research suggests that tough loan payments are affecting major life decisions by recent graduates, forcing them to put off traditional milestones -- from buying a first home to even marriage and having children.
But colleges can be big employers in congressional districts, making it challenging for politicians who represent them to also take them on, says the Journal.
READ MORE
.
You might think a major metropolitan newspaper that boasts "The Midwest's largest reporting team" on its front page would report on a suburban demonstration attracting thousands of people. In the case of the Chicago Tribune, you'd be wrong.
Today's Tribune print edition makes no mention of yesterday's Tea Party Express protest in New Lenox, Illinois, located only 36 miles from Chicago's Loop. The Southtown Star did cover the event on its Web site, noting:
About 6,000 people packed the hillside venue at The Commons Performing Arts Pavilion for the protest, part of a nationwide Tea Party Express tour that includes speeches, musical performances and updates from a traveling Fox News correspondent.
.
"In this case you've got a lot of people who are truly agitated about [the president's school speech] and I think partly that's the polarization continuing over time. And partly it's simply because Barack Obama is a different kind of president: first African- American, [you know; racism]
"But I gotta tell you, Amy [Robach], as somebody who's covered Washington for a long time, this is one of the most ridiculous controversies I've ever seen. So far as I can tell, the biggest danger to kids in this whole thing is that a lot of the parents complaining aren't smart enough to raise them very effectively. Because if you think that a president coming into your school, kids school, and saying work hard and stay in school is a danger to kids, you've got some problems."
The philosophical breach between the American people and the intellectuals is the hope of the United States.
The revolt keeps growing, from tea parties to angry town hall meetings across the country, an uprising against the attempts of an elite to force on us an all-powerful State, about as welcome as grandma's cod-liver oil. Examples of revolt go beyond irate callers to radio talk shows. Take for instance the incident at a Frankie Valli concert recently posted on American Thinker, and the disgust and anger in Joe Sheffat's article. Sen. Barbara Boxer encountered it, as did Sen. Claire McCaskill, who made the mistake of asking if she was trusted.
The elite seem unable to comprehend that anyone could possibly oppose their infinitely superior wisdom, hence the strange and radical smears against the town hall opposition. No one could possibly have a better idea than us, the elite, therefore the town hall "mobs" must be fakes. Anyone, like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, or Sarah Palin, who thinks differently than us, the elite, surely must be of lower intellect.
The elite are unable to understand that this is not about taxes, or health care, or politics. It is about them... [snip]
The root cause of Nazism lies in a power that most people ignore, disparage - and underestimate. The cause is not the events hailed or cursed in headlines and street rallies, but the esoteric writings of the professors who, decades or centuries earlier, laid the foundation for those events.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
The hope of the United States lies in the philosophical breach between the American people and the intellectuals.
The people admire material wealth, practical success, technological innovation. The intellectuals dismiss such values as "middle class," and say that machines are destroying the globe. The people admire self-reliance, productiveness, and the other virtues of the so-called "work ethic." The intellectuals say that these virtues are impossible, unnecessary, antisocial, and/or "Puritan compulsiveness."
The people approve of personal ambition, are eager to pursue their own happiness, think that a man should not live on handouts but should earn what he gets, and reject the insistent demands for self-immolation. The intellectuals denounce this - every element of it - as selfish and therefore vicious.
The people hotly reject the proliferating manifestations of the welfare state, from soaring welfare rolls to forced busing to sexual quotas. The intellectuals condemn this as unfeeling, racist, "sexist."
